Foldable screens: the "last straw" for automakers to raise prices.

Authors | Lin Ke, Zheng Hao

Over the past 20 years, the mobile phone industry has built on a simple and reliable bet: time has been on the OEMs' side.

Screens and chips will become increasingly cheaper, and last year's high-end components will become this year's standard. This year's flagship configurations may be the starting point for next year's mid-range phones. The moment a phone is sold, its component costs have already become outdated and cheaper. With the reduction of costs in the supply chain, most manufacturers' profits often only begin to be realized after the production line matures.

This almost constitutes the underlying belief of consumer electronics terminals: given enough time, things will inevitably become cheaper and cheaper to manufacture.

In 2026, this bet began to change dramatically.

The mobile phone industry is fine, but data centers are competing with consumer electronics for the same memory production capacity. Storage manufacturers are more willing to invest their production lines in the more profitable HBM and server DRAM, squeezing out the share left for mobile phones.

The cost reduction curve that the mobile phone industry relied on for survival was interrupted by a completely external force.

Starting in September 2026, Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, and other smartphone manufacturers collectively raised the prices of their models on the same day, with the highest increase for a single model reaching 1,000 yuan. Just a month prior, Xiaomi had conducted a separate price adjustment, a move almost unprecedented in the smartphone industry.

When an industry can no longer make money by "making products cheaper and cheaper," it must find a way to make its products "reasonably expensive" again.

Foldable screens have become the lifeline the mobile phone industry has found in 2026.

I. The premise no longer holds.

In the first week of September 2026, the Chinese mobile phone market witnessed an unprecedented number of high-priced launches.

On September 7th, Huawei took the lead, launching the new Mate XT 2 Extraordinary Master, a tri-fold folding phone with a starting price of 19,999 yuan. The top-of-the-line Lingdun privacy screen version is priced at 24,999 yuan, and it is the first to feature the Kirin 9050 Pro chip. This is Huawei's most expensive folding phone with a starting price.

On the same evening, the Xiaomi 18 Fold was officially released, with a starting price of 10,999 yuan and a ceramic special edition of 15,999 yuan. Lei Jun called it "Xiaomi's most expensive phone to date" at the launch event, and pointed out that "currently, memory is very, very expensive, and our pricing is indeed not cheap, but it is definitely worth the price."

Three days later, at Apple's fall product launch event, the highlight was the iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable phone. The 256GB version in China starts at 15,999 yuan, while the top-of-the-line 2TB version is priced at 26,499 yuan, making it the most expensive new product at the event.

The iPhone 18 Pro starts at 9,999 yuan and the Pro Max starts at 10,999 yuan. With the same memory capacity as the previous generation, the starting price has increased by 1,000 yuan.

A few weeks earlier, in July, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 was launched in China, starting at 12,999 yuan. This marked the first time in six years that Samsung had changed the form factor of its foldable screen phones, switching from the narrow and elongated aspect ratio that had been used for seven generations to a wider 4:3 fold. In April, the Huawei Pura X Max, starting at 10,999 yuan, was the world's first ultra-wide foldable phone.

In four days, three companies released their most expensive phones in history, all of which were foldable screens.

This is no coincidence, because foldable screens are the only area in the mobile phone industry where prices can still rise this year.

For a long time, the profit model of traditional consumer electronics terminals has maintained a clear path.

After market education is completed, shipments expand and cumulative production increases. Then a series of improvements occur simultaneously, such as improved production yield, the process moving from experimentation to maturity, suppliers expanding production and lowering prices to compete for orders, manufacturers' purchasing power continuously increasing, and the initial R&D investment being diluted by larger shipments.

These combined forces will drive a continuous decline in unit costs.

In 1936, American aeronautical engineer Theodore Wright observed a pattern in aircraft manufacturing:

For every doubling of cumulative output, the unit cost decreases by a fixed percentage.

Leitt's Law was thus born, and this law has since been repeatedly verified in almost all manufacturing industries, including semiconductors, photovoltaics, and lithium batteries.

The mobile phone industry has followed this curve perfectly over the past 20 years.

In 2012, a 5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen was a luxury exclusive to flagship phones; now it's an obsolete component. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 series processors were only available in top-of-the-line flagship phones when they were released, but within a year or two, comparable performance was available in mid-range chips.

This mechanism is particularly advantageous for larger OEMs. The larger the shipment volume, the lower the procurement cost, and the greater the profit margin. The money saved can be used to lower prices or continue to increase component availability, creating a positive flywheel effect.

This flywheel contains an industry-accepted but rarely explicitly stated premise—time is on the manufacturer's side.

As long as shipments continue, upstream costs will inevitably decrease. Manufacturers don't even need to invent anything disruptive; they can simply continue along this curve, and profits will naturally materialize once the product matures.

But by 2026, the very premise upon which this industry depended had crumbled.

II. Opposite directions

The actual smartphone shipment volume in 2026 is still there, but the prices of key components are skyrocketing.

HBM and server DRAM, which are needed for AI large-scale model training and inference, have higher profit margins and more stable orders, so storage manufacturers are prioritizing capacity and capital expenditure in these areas.

The supply of traditional DRAM and NAND Flash for consumer electronics is squeezed, procurement competition intensifies, and prices soar.

According to data from TrendForce and other organizations, mobile DRAM contract prices rose by more than 50% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026, while NAND Flash prices surged by more than 90% quarter-on-quarter. By the second quarter, Counterpoint Research's tracking showed that mobile phone memory prices rose by more than 80% quarter-on-quarter.

The price increase has rewritten the cost structure of mobile phones.

By the second quarter of 2026, Counterpoint estimated that DRAM and NAND would account for approximately 23% and 18% of the BOM (Bill of Materials) in typical flagship smartphones, respectively, totaling over 40%. DRAM even surpassed SoC (System-on-Chips) for the first time to become the most expensive single component in flagship smartphones.

According to Counterpoint's estimates, the 1TB iPhone 18 Pro Max has a material cost increase of nearly $300 compared to last year's iPhone 17 Pro Max with the same capacity.

The price increase is a fact that has already occurred.

On September 1st, Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, and several other manufacturers collectively raised the prices of their models on the same day. The Xiaomi 17 increased from 4799 yuan to 5099 yuan, the Xiaomi 17 Pro from 5399 yuan to 5699 yuan, and the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max from 6499 yuan to 6999 yuan. The Huawei Mate 80 series 12+256GB version rose from 4699 yuan to 5499 yuan, an increase of 800 yuan. Xiaomi had just completed a separate price adjustment of 300 to 500 yuan per unit on August 2nd, marking two price increases within a month.

Back in March, OPPO had already announced price adjustments for some of its A-series, K-series, and OnePlus products.

It is extremely rare in the smartphone industry for multiple manufacturers to raise prices repeatedly and in a short period of time for models currently on sale.

Counterpoint predicts that even if OEMs raise prices, the overall gross margin of flagship phones in 2026 will still be slightly lower than that of the same generation of products in 2025, as price increases will not be able to keep up with cost increases.

The mobile phone industry has also experienced memory price increases in the past. The round from 2017 to 2018 lasted for nearly two years, but the reason at that time was the mismatch between supply and demand, and prices fell after the production capacity was released.

The difference this time is that the competition for memory production capacity by AI may become a long-term trend.

The long-standing assumption that "the longer the storage time, the cheaper the storage" does not currently have a timeline for automatic repair.

Three changes of "identity" lead to price increases

Costs have increased, so mobile phones have to become more expensive, but "becoming more expensive" is a problem in itself.

The most frustrating aspect of memory price increases for manufacturers is that they raise costs without significantly increasing the perceived difference for consumers. Adding a telephoto lens to a phone is something consumers can see; however, while LPDDR5X doubles the price by increasing capacity, consumers can barely perceive the difference in daily use.

The flagship candybar phone is caught in this two-way squeeze: the increase in costs is greater than the price increase that consumers are willing to accept, and the difference has to be absorbed by the manufacturers themselves.

Apple's launch event this year was a microcosm of the market. The iPhone 18 Pro saw a price increase of 1,000 yuan while maintaining the same memory capacity. The standard version was absent and postponed to spring 2027. The most expensive new product at the event was the foldable Duo.

Even as the manufacturer with the strongest brand, Apple's room for price increases for its candybar phones is very limited. In fact, the 18 Pro even saw a price drop on e-commerce platforms right after its release.

Foldable screens cannot optimize the cost structure, but they can provide another pricing reference.

There's a joke circulating in the industry:

Adding a folding function to an 8-inch tablet still won't sell it for the price of a phone; but if you reverse the logic and define the same hardware as "a phone that unfolds into a tablet," the price range immediately changes.

Consumers are already accepting flagship phones costing between 6,000 and 10,000 yuan. With the addition of features like foldable screens, large screens, and rare design elements, the price of 10,000 yuan suddenly becomes understandable.

The pricing power for hardware changes does not come from the "foldable" feature, but from the redefinition of the "phone".

Mobile phones are devices that people carry with them every day, use most frequently, and also serve as a means of expressing identity. This market can naturally accommodate a price range far higher than that of tablets.

Moreover, not all folding phones are negotiable; the current market preference is for phones larger than traditional candybar phones.

Counterpoint projects that in 2026, shipments of large folding panels will increase by 107% year-on-year, with their market share rising to 81%, while shipments of flip panels will decline by 59%, with their market share falling to 16%.

Consumers vote with their money, willing to pay for "getting bigger" but unwilling to pay for "getting smaller" or "not changing".

The starting price difference between the iPhone 18 Pro and Phone Duo is 6,000 yuan. The starting price difference between the Pura X Max and the Mate XT 2 tri-fold phone is as high as 9,000 yuan. The Xiaomi 18 Fold, which starts at 10,999 yuan, is called "Xiaomi's most expensive phone to date" by Lei Jun.

These are all publicly available prices from the same manufacturer, generation, and release at the same time. You can see the direct observation value of the category premium without any BOM breakdown.

Counterpoint predicts that flagship gross margins will continue to decline in 2026, but foldable screens offer the opportunity for repricing.

The same increase in memory prices will have completely different impacts on the profit model of a 7,000 yuan candybar phone and a 14,000 yuan foldable phone.

IV. The straw can only support one section.

The pricing logic for foldable screens was validated by the market in 2026.

The Huawei Pura X Max, the world's first ultra-wide foldable phone, went on sale on April 25, with the standard version starting at 10,999 yuan.

As of late August, blogger RD reported that the Pura X Max had accumulated 781,100 retail activations, with the collector's edition consistently outselling the standard version. Following Apple's foldable screen release in early September, the model experienced a short-term sales surge. Huawei officially disclosed that factory shipments exceeded 1.2 million units in four months after its launch; this figure includes channel inventory and is higher than retail activations.

Consumers are beginning to accept the new price range and are choosing higher configurations within that range, which is the most direct evidence of category premium.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 wide folding design also received better-than-expected market feedback. In August, Samsung increased its annual production capacity from 2.8 million units to 3.8 million units due to the strong pre-orders. The wide folding design boosted orders, and this model accounted for 70% of the Z8 series' pre-orders.

The Xiaomi 18 Fold has also entered its first sales verification phase. Third-party monitoring data shows that approximately 36,000 units were sold on the first day of sales, September 10th. Xiaomi officially disclosed that its first sales increased by 310% compared to the previous generation's large folding phone, which at least indicates that the new price range of over 10,000 yuan has not hindered initial demand.

However, at this point, there is still far from enough evidence to claim that foldable screens are the savior of the mobile phone industry.

On September 11, Counterpoint released panel shipment data that revealed another key anomaly: global shipments of foldable phone panels in the first half of 2026 declined by 13% year-on-year.

During the six months when the cost impact was most severe, foldable screens did not see a significant increase in sales volume. The full-year growth is projected at 23%, but almost all of this growth comes from Apple's entry into the market in the second half of the year.

Counterpoint predicts that Apple will contribute 27% of the total foldable screen panel shipments for the year, with all of it concentrated in the second half of the year.

Roughly estimated, the combined shipments of all other manufacturers excluding Apple are only about 90% of the total shipments in 2025.

This means that without Apple's entry, the foldable screen market will actually shrink in 2026.

At the product level, foldable screens have not outpaced costs.

For example, the Samsung Z Fold8, a wide-angle foldable phone, starts at 12,999 yuan in China, which is about 500 to 1,000 yuan more expensive than its predecessor, but the standard version has removed the telephoto lens.

Some analysts believe that this is to keep the weight of the device under 200 grams, to differentiate it from the more expensive Ultra version, and to objectively help control costs.

Regarding the more extreme tri-fold form factor, South Korean media outlet The Bell, citing supply chain information, estimates that the BOM cost of the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold, plus the amortized R&D, production line, mold-making, and marketing expenses, is likely to be higher than the retail price in South Korea.

While the claim of losing money on every unit sold is jarring, supply chain data does indeed point in this direction.

Foldable screens currently solve the problem of pricing freedom, which makes price increases explainable, but they themselves do not outpace costs.

V. A New Intensity

We've been working on foldable screens for seven years, trying out all sorts of forms, including Z-shaped triple folds, vertical flip covers, and horizontally narrow and long folds.

These different answers suddenly converged into the same form in 2026.

The Huawei Pura X Max features a 7.7-inch "wide fold" inner screen, while the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 boasts a 7.6-inch 4:3 aspect ratio "wide fold." The Xiaomi 18 Fold, with its 7.58-inch inner screen, is officially described as a "middle fold." The Apple iPhone Duo has a 7.6-inch inner screen with an aspect ratio of approximately 1:1.4, which Apple describes as "passport size."

Although the four companies used four different names, they mostly ended up using the same 7-8 inch foldable screen, which is close to the size of a sheet of paper.

Behind the convergence lies a long history of trial and error. Huawei went from the outward folding Mate X in 2019 to the tri-folding Mate XT in 2024, and then to the wide folding Pura X Max in 2026. Every step in between required significant investment in research and development and yield improvement.

Samsung has been working on the Galaxy Fold since 2019 and the Z Fold8 since 2026, only admitting seven years later that the elongated form factor is not the end. These costs cannot be protected by patents; once the form factor is validated, newcomers can start directly from the finish line.

Xiaomi has abandoned the MIX Fold series name that it had used for 5 years and entered the wide folding market with the brand new name "Xiaomi 18 Fold". It is the first to launch a self-developed chip, with a technological starting point lower than Huawei's starting from scratch back then.

As the price pattern converges, the price bands are undergoing a more significant split.

For example, in the traditional horizontal folding screen market in the first half of 2026, the vivo X Fold6, released on June 26, was priced at 7,999 yuan for the 12+256GB version, bringing the entry-level price of horizontal folding screens down to below 8,000 yuan.

The Honor Magic V6 was released earlier, on March 10th, starting at 8999 yuan. Shortly after, the OPPO Find N6 was released on March 17th, and after a 1000 yuan discount across all channels starting in August, it also came down to 8999 yuan.

The price range for the "old model" has been reduced to between 8,000 and 10,000 yuan.

The new form represented by the wide folding doors is rebuilding the price range in the range of 10,999 to 15,999 yuan.

Within the same product category, one line is falling while another is rising; the only difference is whether the pattern is new or not.

The premium for foldable screens comes from their scarcity, stemming from their status as "another type of phone".

Once a certain form factor is adopted by all mainstream manufacturers, it is no longer scarce. When consumers are presented with four foldable phones costing over 10,000 yuan each, their comparison methods will immediately revert to focusing on specifications, camera, chip, and battery life—the same price comparison logic used for candybar phones.

Category premiums can evaporate in an instant.

There's another place that's even more uncomfortable than before.

This round of competition also requires withstanding the pressure of rising costs. Memory prices are still rising, upstream suppliers are no longer helping, and the room for price reduction is being squeezed out by homogeneous products from multiple companies.

The Xiaomi 18 Fold and Huawei Pura X Max both start at 10,999 yuan, with similar form factors and comparable prices. Samsung is 2,000 yuan more expensive, but it has made some compromises in terms of configuration. Apple enters the market at a higher price of 15,999 yuan, but it is a first-generation product without any iterative accumulation.

The price war hasn't even officially started yet, but the poker tables are already packed with people.

VI. Second Half Schedule

At the X Fold6 launch event on June 26, vivo Vice President Huang Tao said: "The first evolution of foldable screens is to unfold a large screen; the second evolution is to unfold an AI workbench to complete a complex and large task."

It's clear that a foldable screen manufacturer is already shifting its narrative from hardware to AI.

The focus of differentiation in mobile phones has shifted once.

For the first decade, the competition was about hardware specifications: who had the biggest screen, the most cameras, and the fastest processor. Later, Apple used the App Store to shift the competition from simply adding more hardware to building an ecosystem. Hardware can be matched, but an ecosystem cannot be replicated. Thus, the software ecosystem has become the iPhone's deepest moat and its most enduring weapon for maintaining high ASP (Average Selling Price).

In this round of development in 2026, several OEMs again staked their capital expenditures on hardware: hinges, flexible screens, yield rates, and screen ratios. When all manufacturers simultaneously enter the same form factor, the competitive window for these technologies may only be one or two generations apart.

Meanwhile, another line of investigation is progressing quietly.

On September 16, 2026, the Nubia NaviX Ultra, also known as the second generation of the Nubia Beanbag Phone, jointly developed by ByteDance and ZTE Nubia, was launched. Its predecessor, which was released as an engineering prototype, had a limited release of 30,000 units that sold out within a day.

In the design of the Doubao phone, AI has system-level operation permissions and can automatically execute tasks across applications, triggering risk control restrictions from apps such as WeChat and Meituan.

But the significance of this event far outweighs sales figures. It demonstrates that AI's control over the mobile operating system has become so important that someone is vying for it, and the contenders don't necessarily have to be mobile phone manufacturers.

However, AI cannot support a price range today. Most OEMs such as Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, and Samsung have participated in the registration of AI on the mobile phone side, and it is difficult to create differentiation when everyone participates.

After all, AI is an egalitarian technology that will most likely make every phone better, but it is unlikely to make any particular phone more expensive.

This is the exact opposite of foldable screens, which can be seen, touched, and held in your hand to show to others, so they can explain the price, but AI cannot see them.

At least until 2026, no consumer will pay an extra 5,000 yuan for a phone because of AI.

The market often says that the first half of the automotive industry's development was electrification, which changed the form of products; while the second half is intelligent driving, which will redefine product value.

Foldable screens may play the same role as electrification in the mobile phone industry. They change how products are made and how much they can be priced, but they don't change what more the device can do for users.

AI may be the variable that changes "what can be done", but it is currently still a cost item, not a premium item: the larger the edge model, the more memory it consumes. If manufacturers want to use AI for differentiation, the first thing they do is buy more expensive memory.

The mobile phone industry is currently lacking two things.

It found a pattern that could explain the price, but that's not the answer for the second half; it may have seen the second half, but that thing can't explain the price for now.

Foldable screens are supporting this round of price increases, not the next round of competition. When everyone rushes to the same price increase exit, that exit is destined to become more crowded.

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